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NASA's Flying Wing Breaks 2 Records
ELBnet writes "CNN reports in this story that NASA's Helios flying wing broke the altitude records for both a propeller and jet aircraft with an altitude of 85,100 feet... and they were still climbing shooting for 100,000."
I though the SR-71 routinely flew up in the 100,000 ft altitude range. I don't know if that was the "Aviation Leak" operational altitude, or if that's what it hit on its one unclassified flight (the one at the end of its service life where an SR-71 set a new speed record on its way to the museum).
Isn't something similar beeing planned already ?
AFAIK it is, but not with small lightweight planes, but with ballons.
Baloons would be better suited for this (especially communications), because they can go higher, stay up longer, and have the ability to carry a larger payload.
Maybe someday we will have something similar to Iridium that uses baloons instead of satelittes, thereby beeing cheaper and more affordable ?
You wouldn't need a SAM or other kinetic weapon to kill it. A substantial laser would cook it, melt holes in the wings, blind it, or whatever. Probably many engineering colleges would have lasers powerful enough for this. The only trick would be aiming it. Remember - due to the slow speed, you can keep the laser on it for minutes at a time. First rule of air combat: Speed is life.
Seems like with the thing being so slow, it would be spotted by somebody.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Sure, it makes sense that if you built a huge one of these you could ride it up into space ... or not.
The problem is that while lift scales with the square of size (make something twice as big and it gets four times as much lift), its WEIGHT scales with the cube (it gets eight times as heavy). This means that you couldn't use one of these to say, lift a rocket into near-orbit and launch it from there. In the end this doesn't get us any closer to space - it just gets the telcos a cheaper short term satellite.
Just hook up ten of these with network cards and cheap Cat 5 cable and it will go, like, 700,000 feet.
The problem here is that the only thing providing acceleration to the satellite is gravity. Recall that to stay in a circular trajectory, we must have the condition a = v^2/r. The force on the satellite is only gravity, which acts with a strength of F = (G*Ms*Me)/(r^2). By Newton's second law, F = Ms*a, so Ms*v^2/r = (G*Ms*Me)/(r^2). Simplifying, v^2 = G*Me/r .
Now, recall v = distance / time. distance = 2*pi*r, time = 1 (day). Therefore, we find 4*pi^2*r^2 = G*Me/r, or r = (G*Me/(4*pi^2))^(1/3)
Therefore, under only the infuence of gravity, there is only one height at which geosynchronus orbit is possible, since in orbital mechanics speed is proportional to distance.
Do the physics before flaming, ok?
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized. -AC
Think about it. It boggles the mind. Unmanned flight on the edge of space with a machine that can reportedly stay up until its parts wear out? This just reeks of arrogance. Is there nothing these secular humanist scientists think is beyond the reach of mankind? Do we always have to strive for bigger, better, faster, higher, etc? Do we have so little humility that we always think we can out do our last effort? Would it be so painful to confess to ourselves that we are merely human, and we have our limitations? Any limitations at all?
Apparently there is nothing we can admit is better left in the realm of the divine than in the hands of man. Given recent developments in this and other fields (like cloning and stem cell research), it seems we've forgotten the lesson learned at Babel. I fear that humanity will have to be taught that lesson again, and it won't be a very pleasant experience.
not mentioned here so far but i thought it was interesting ;)
Umm, lets see. Take one helium balloon, add motors and you have tada. An airship.
No idea where you get the limited airtime thing. The only thing that stops an airship staying up for ever is the fuel. If you use solar cells and electric motors in a similar way to helios, you don't need to carry fuel.
Deleted
Then why not fill the void inside the wing with helium as well?
Lift from the gas + life from aerodynamics...
O.k, I could see it might cause flight control problems but it might help it use less energy to get up there. And yes, I know the gas will expand at altitude so just use a small ammount maybe?
You could always vent it during decent so that the darn thing does actually reach the ground.
I got my words backwards, but otherwise I think I'm right.
Not being made of metal doesn't mean that it won't reflect Radar
Flocks of birds show up on radar, if their RCS was a function of metal content they wouldn't.
Most people think it has to be metal to reflect radar because metal does reflect radar so well.
You can also build a metal plane difficult to detect by radar. So long as it's a radar system where the transmitter and receiver are in close proximity.
Actually, the prototype, called Pathfinder, was about half the size. But i dont belive you could make it much smaller.
The aviation world uses the following units:
Alt: Feet
Speed: Knots
Vertical Speed: Feet/Min
Distance: Nautical Mile
Joe Kittinger made the highest intentional skydive in history when in 1960 he jumped out of a balloon at 103,000 ft., and is the only person to have broken the sound barrier with his body alone.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
has NASA's PR department just gotten too used to blurting that out
People are not interested in seeing tax money used in science unless they feel they could benefit from it. So, saying something like this to people who don't have a clue on science is
Why would you want to conduct experiments at 100,000 ft at 20 MPH?
A few things come to mind.
Chemical analysis of rocket exhausts might be possible, if you put this in the right position. The solid-fuel stages might leave some dust particles that give hints to what kind of fuels are used. This would help in estimating the ICBM payload capacity.
Low-orbit satellites have orbital velocities of several miles per second, so if you want to have a better look at that Chinese ICBM base, Helios could be a choice.
Atmospheric research would benefit from this. You could send up a whole armada of weather stations in the upper atmosphere instead of a single weather satellite.
Studies of the Earth's magnetic field and it's connection to the solar wind could use measurements right under the auroral oval, where solar wind hits the upper atmosphere. Combining these with radar-scattering experiments would be extremely interesting to geophysicists.
As this thing runs on solar, and is well above clouds, it only need to stay on the sunny side of Earth to run forever. Perhaps a medium-sized battery and some smart remote pilot could keep this up during nighttime, goin only halfway down and climbing back up every morning?
Sooo, all I need to do now is figure out how to incorporate this research in my Lego Mindstorms robot, to help me get up to the ISS. Fantastic!
Unless the balloon is tethered, how do you keep it in a geostationary orbit? Also, I'm not sure you're going to get a balloon much higher than 96,000 feet.
Just a few random thoughts.
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
How many geosync satellites are floating around up there? How many other satellites?
I'm thinkin that the surface area of a sphere of radius 25,000 mi is much much greater than that of a sphere of 19 mi (100,000 feet). And these things are pretty big. And you'd need more of them for the same coverage area.
Would there be room enough for everyone who would want to and be able to afford to put one of these up? Will we need increased high altitude / low orbit tracking capabilites?
*** WILL THESE NEW CAPABILITIES HELP US FIND THE UFO'S?!?! ***
Ever try to get a hundred thousand people to subscribe to a service that doesn't exist yet? Soryy, but the .com boom is already past.
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can people handle 100,000? don't they pass out?
I remember hearing somewhere (CNN maybe?) that NASA plans to use such craft to fly into space. One thing that confuses me is, wouldn't it need to be in a gaseous environment to be able to propel itself? Last I heard, space is mostly empty..
Also, that article from yesterday regarding the spy satellites, I remember someone stating that the satellites could have it's course changed. So, I'm wondering, what do they use for propulsion? If it's gaseous, then I assume there's a limited supply of propellant on the satellite, and changes to it's orbital course would have to be minimalized. If solar panels somehow play into this, then how? Channelling solar energy to heat up a component would require a gas to react, and thus propel, the satellite, would it not?
I've no idea what average wind speeds at 100,000 feet are, but I know wind speeds at airliner altitudes are typically *much* faster than 20 mph. Assuming that's the case at these higher altitudes, sounds like you'd have about as much control over where these planes went as a high-altitude balloon (ie not very much). What matters is the force the wind exerts agains the plane. Given that pressure decreases with altitude, this means that for the same speed of wind, the force exerted in the plane also decreases with altitude.
This thing is a fantastic spy plane! Just think of the advantages over a conventional spy plane or satellite. Instead of waiting for a satellite to pass over the target area, or sending a recon flight, you can monitor your target 24 hours a day with live action video! And it has such a small radar signature that they won't even know you're there!
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
As another poster has already pointed out, it was a U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers that was famously shot down over the USSR. But I felt like pointing out that no SR-71 has been shot down.
Not that they didn't try. In 1981 it was reported that there had been over 1000 missile launches against the Blackbird. None successful. And the other guys would be more than happy to tell us that they managed to shoot down one, so it's unlikely to be some kind of closely guarded secret.
But then again, I could be wrong.
However, there's various vague orbits that are typically used for practical reasons (cost to launch, power, inverse square law etc.). Generally, you'll hear about:
- Low altitude orbits - these don't require as much broadcast power or cost as much to launch, but are close to the top of the atmosphere (particularly when it expands in summer) and can slowly get dragged back down to Earth.
- High altitude orbits - cost more to put up and the inverse square law means they need more power (include Tim Allen grunt here), but they're less likely to come crashing back down onto Fiji (or wherever) in a few years.
And yes, you're right, there's a lot of satellites already up there because it's so much more convenient to have your satellite in a fixed position in the sky (relative to the ground). Of course, IANANASAE(ngineer), but that's the basic issue with orbit altitude.Jet engines and rocket engines work because they burn fuel, the fuel expands, and produces force agains the walls of the combustion chamber. It does so more on the front than on the back, because there is a hole in the back against which it obviously doesn't exercise any pressure.
Ehmm. Normal jet-engines need air for two things. One is to provide the oxigen to burn the fuel.
The fuel burns, expands and is expelled backwards. The efficiency of such a motor can be greatly enhanced by the second reason for air: Instead of thrusting out a little burnt fuel at enormous speeds, you use this power to drive a big fan, effectively thrusting out lots more air (about 10x the amount of hot, burnt fuel) at much slower speed.
Now what "jet engines" have to do with the Helios is beyond me: Helios is an electrically powered propellor aircraft, which definitively needs air to fly.... First for lift, and secondly for propulsion.
If I get my aerondynamics right, the amount of energy required to fly this thing is roughly the same at sealevel, as it is at 30km. However, with 20x lower airpressure, it will fly about 4.5 times as fast. Thus the propellors will have to be engineered to be efficient at both airspeeds!
Roger.
No, it was U-2 that was flying high and shot down. SR-71 Blackbird flew high and fast, but wasn't cost-effective enough. Just my two planes...
It gives alot of information about using HELIOS as a broadband internet solution . It is also much more informative about costs and how it runs.
Here are some exerpts I thought were worth sharing.
- - If you are reading this, I'm not having a productive day.
For the ugliest thing I have ever seen. That thing reminds me of backyard inventer airplanes back in the 30's. Those were the days. Toss an engine on your back and glue some metal sheeting to your arms and you could barely yell the word crackpot before you hit the ground in a flaming ball of fire.
With a 74 meter wingspan, this comes not really as a surprise.. :)
Perhaps a better name for the project would be Icarus ?
(On second thought, best not to jinx it
o/~ Join us now and share the software
This is good, but I think more energy should be focused on our four wheeled transportation buckets! Why not imporve the cars BUT also make them cost effective?
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
It's still not going to be as fast as a cannon fired projectile. The maximum damage a weight dropped from altitude can do would be less than a cannon firing solid shot of the same weight. The difference here is that 60 lbs. is more weight than a typical cannon ball.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
It takes about 500 meters for a skydiver to reach its speed limit.. So you don't gain anything by going higher.
A bomb is going to be considerably more aerodynamic, so it's terminal velocity is higher.
I've been posting on the net since 1994 and I still haven't come up with a good sig!
The most likely solution would probably be a small laser-guided missile.
Quite effective, if you know what room of a building your trying to trash.
Such bombing systems have become prevailant since after the Vietnam War. Indiscriminate bombing got a deservedly bad rap, so now they take the trouble to tell the bomb exactly where they want it to go.
At 60 lbs, though, the best you could do would be the wartime equivalent of vandalism. Useful for sending a message, but not much more.
What's this Submit thingy do?
While this post isn't insightful in any way, I tought I'd share in an attempt to humor some of you. I was actually in Kauai last week with some of my friends, and we were driving around the southern end of the island doing touristy things. We decided to check out a secluded beach we had heard about on the west side of the island, so we began driving. Eventually we got to a dirt road that supposedly led to this beach. After driving a couple of miles, we saw a guard house down the road and some signs that, in no uncertain terms, told us we shouldn't be there. Apparently, this was the military base where this thing is housed and flies out of. Needless to say, I couldn't check it out in person because once we were about 100 yards from the gate, three machine-gun toting guards came running out of their shack to see who we were. We promptly turned around and headed back. We did manage to find the beach, which was quite beautiful, by the way.
this being the first time i have ever had a first post, i would like to thank a few people.
first off.. thank you slashdot. if it weren't for you, there would be no glamour in first posts.
i would like to thank my parents, my girlfriend, all the linux nerds in the world, my friends, the rest of my family, my hamster, my co-workers, the people who ride the bus with me, the people at subway, the guy at the liquor store, the lady at 7-11, the scary pizza guy... yeah. thats about it.
above all, i thank god. god gave me the power to click faster than the rest of you suckers.
AND YES... i used my +1 bonus on the FP, and i am using it again for this speech. there is nothing about FP to be ashamed of!
-gerbik
Assuming the airplane can fly within range of such a high flying object...
/. military strategist.
Fly up, launch AAM, game over.
Jeremy -- An armchair
Uh.. actually, that is *almost* one of the proposed
uses for these things. Check out:
SkyTower Telecommunications
or
AeroVironment
Exactly how much lift do you think you'd get by filling the void in the wing with helium?
Do you know how much helium is required to provide lift? Have you seen just how big airships are?
Deleted
Dude, don't you remember when Rutan and Yeager flew around the world without refueling? Stayed up 9 days on one tank of gas.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
How 'bout we strap some 802.11 access points to these things and run a giant free wireless network from low earth orbit.
errr that should read winter. And while I am on the topic of inventions, I would just like to say that defensivedriving.com is kick ass. Stupid no u-turn sign, they could put it a little farther away from the turn lane.
Although I've never had a class on the subject, practical experience tells me that you're right. There are a lot of old wood and fabric airplanes out there, as well as some composites that show up just fine on radar. Also, we locate precipitation with radar. So if water reflects radar, I'm going to have to assume that the composites they used in this thing would also.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
Coward! Dare you approach me as a real user? :)
Actually, this one was posted first. When the top-level comment only had a score of 2. I figured people would not see it here, so I posted it top-level.
It also seemed more appropriate to post top-level (when I started thinking about it) because it was not really related to the parent at all.
Well, it propably will get used by the US government for spying anyway, wont it?
Perhaps it could be used for broadband communication? Just have them circuling above with antennas...
Find nice cocktail recipes @ www.spitzy.net
When I first glanced at this article, I saw the words "NASA" and "breaks" and I immediately thought they screwed something up again.... Anyway, the idea that they can keep this thing up indefinitely (or until a component fails) on solar power is pretty amazing.
An F-22 with the long range version of the AMRAAM could easily hit it. An F-15C with the standard AMRAAM could probably hit it too, since it's only moving at 20 mph and isn't maneuvering. We're not talking about an SR-71 here that's moving at 2000 mph at 80Kft. The launch envelope against this thing is essentially going to be small stationary circle - a lot easier to hit than a thin ellipse that's moving at twice the speed you are.
The 20mph was at much lower levels while taking off. At the maximum levels it was flying much faster in order to have enough air moving over the wings to produce lift (you need lift enough to offset the weight) The peak speed listed is 170mph for this flight. It couldn't do that at sealevel, even in a straight dive due to the drag.
I seem to recall the SR-71 Blackbird as being considered untouchable...until it was shot down.
In all fairness, I'll point out that the pilot had been forced to fly at a lower altitude due to an emergency.
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You're right about the gravity thing, this is still relatively close to Earth (roughly 18-19 miles) and the altitude alone would not cause a significant decrease in gravity. The way orbits around a celestial body (such as Earth) work is that the force of attraction between the satellite and the planet (gravity) is equal to the centripital outward force from the speed of the orbit. Technically speaking, it is possible to have an orbit around Earth at sea level, the obvious downsides are resistance from the air and all the objects at this altitude (ships, people, buildings, mountains, etc.). I don't remember the speed of travel required at sea level to be in orbit, but it is many miles per second relative to the surface. Virtually all satellites travel faster than 20 MPH relative to the surface. The exception to this rule is satellites in a geosynchronous orbit, and the altitude for this is many times higher (no I don't remember this altitude, but I understand it is getting pretty crowded).
The only way this thing could give you zero gravity is if it fell out of the sky. And that would only give you about 80 seconds, assuming you didn't reach terminal velocity. (You would be hitting the ground at about 1700 MPH.) On the other hand, 100,000 feet would put you above most of the atmosphere, which would be useful in many research and communications applications.
Using the term "Gravity Bomb" also usually implies a "Dumb (or Iron) Bomb", one which has no onboard guidance and steering capability, as opposed to the TV-friendly "Smart Bomb" which can be steered to a particular target point. I say implies, though the example in question, Stigler's David's Sling , used a guided munition, as did Donald Kingsbury's "The Moon Goddess and the Sun" , a much better read, IMHO.
Having said that, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that ANYTHING even semi-streamlined (or compact for its weight) dropping from 50,000 feet is going to make a pretty damn big hole. Bomb shelters aside, few targets of military value are heavily armored on top, since most weapons are shooting at their sides, not their tops. Several existing anti-tank weapons take advantage of that fact, such as the Swedish "BILL" rocket, which flies about a meter above the shooters line-of-sight to the target. Once at the target, it fires a conventional armor-piercing warhead downward at 45 degrees into the thinner overhead armor.
(But I digress ...)
120 characters?! Who do they think they are, telling me I only get 120 characters? This will never do. I must have mor
Has anyone else noticed that Hemos and michael have been the only moderators to post things in almost 40 hours? They're either the only ones that actually work or have been shafted with the Sat/Sun shifts =P
Reb
There's not much air pressure at 100000 feet.
> How 'bout we strap some 802.11 access points to these things
> and run a giant free wireless network from low earth orbit.
Maybe I'm not cognizant of 802.11 technology, but does it work from sixteen miles out? (85,000 / 5280 = 16+) That seems like it would require far too powerful a transmitter to be worth it.
Virg
Not always a game over.
Even if a fighter can get close, once you start getting over 60,000 feet things get touchy. You have to ask yourself if the fighter/missile combo are within a launch envelope, and for alot of AAMs, anything above 60,000 is a cruise altitude because there ins't enough air to manouver.
When the F-15s and MiG29s and Su-27 did thier "Streak Eagle" times to altitude and altitude records, they were stripped down. Most modern fighters have a time staying above 50,000, let alone firing weapons from there.
This would be good for broadband, actually. Broadband equipment would be light, I suspect, and the latency would be less than 5ms.
Actually, the Chinese military will have a jet fighter ram into it (and subsequently crash) so that they can blame the US government for flying these things a bit too aggressively near their borders.
-j
Torg, come out of the spaceship. Nothing can stop Torg.
NASA breaking an altitude record?
I suppose it's better than breaking a Mars probe.
Research is never stupid. Even if you don't end up sending it to mars, there are practical applications here for an aircraft that can stay in the air more or less indefinitely. At a cost of two orders of magnititude less than what it costs to just launch a communications satellite, you could use the craft in the same role, assuming it pulls in enough power to run the kit you'd have to load on it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
It's *still* easier to do it with a helium balloon.
Talk about wasting taxpayers money trying take fixed wing aircraft to an absurd degree.
Deleted
This would be the case if Mars had the same gravitational field as Earth since it is the planet's gravitation field that pulls the atmosphere towards the planet - less gravity pull means less pressure. The air pressure some 19 miles below the surface of Mars should be quite less than standard sea-level Earth measurements.
Lets face it, even with a small payload, like 600 lbs, that's two reasonably effective gravity bombs from an aircraft that is not even made of metal, so practically invisible to radar.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
OK, latest reports were that it hit 96000 Feet.
For you metricheads, thats 29261 metres.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
The more likely application for Helios - military application anyhow - is as a spy plane or combat targetting system. It can easily, and almost endlessly, circle over an enemy nation or a battlefield taking pictures, infrared, or any of a multitude of other high-altitude sensors, and beaming them back to friendly forces.
How about a Helios spotter that constantly broadcasts birdseye camera shots of a battlefield directly to visor mounted screens on soliders?
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
> Wouldn't it be even lighter to fill an airship with empty space?
Well, that wouldn't work, or your head would have lifted you into orbit by now.
In case you're really serious about this, filling an airship with vacuum would cause it to collapse, like a deflated balloon. To counter this you'd need to make the envelope awesomely strong, and the added weight needed for that would keep it on the ground.
Virg
I don't know, but I honestly thought that U-2s and SR-71s flew above 100,000 feet routinely. I also thought that most modern fighters could go >60K' (unclassified; max altitudes are actually classified). The records stated in that article just don't seem all that impressive to me. Maybe straight and level flight for a certain period is needed to set a record.
Ok, it was only a movie, but in "The Right Stuff", Chuck Yeager attempts to break a Soviet altitude record of 114,000'. He gets to about 102,000' before he 'screws the pooch'. Guess that wouldn't count anyway.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
Have a plane which requires constant power just to stay in the air rather than a ballonn which requires no motive power just to stay in the air.
Bizarre.
Deleted
Do the swap in the title for the parent. I got my words mixed up, but otherwise I think I'm right.
So, you wouldn't even know who did it. As this is very public research, has the US army something better or have they not realized the potential of it?
I hope it is the latter.
Unless you're an IT guy for some tinpot dictator with a hard-on for the US, I think you meant to type 'former.'
Didn't you?
20 mph at sea-level is not the same as 20 mpg at 100,000 feet. There is a thing called 'True Air Speed." This is the speed you are going over the ground, and is significantly different than the speed shown on the airspeed indicator. That's called Indicated Air Speed. It's different because the air is thinner the higher you go, and the airspeed indicator works from ram air hitting the pitot tube. So, when you're flying along at 35,000 in a 747, the true air speed is something like 500 - 600 knots, while the indicated is somewhere around 250 - 300 knots. The rule of thumb is 2 knots per 1,000 ft. At 100,000 feet, the thing would be doing 200 knots or so true air speed. When I was in primary pilot training, I once computed that a Cessna 152 indication 90 knots at 100,000 feet would be doing just about mach 1.
Which is why they take their time and choose their days. it was nice and clear and blue on saturday but they postponed due to high altitude clouds. Just like the shuttle, they have to consider the entire flightpath before launch.
Does NASA have to share anything with the general public? I realize that this is an extremely large plane, but the fact that it was flown so high and under solar power is pretty amazing.
This would lead me to assume that they have made some amazing leaps in terms of solar power. If this is the case, why is it the only solar powered item I own is a calculator? It would seem as though there should be many solar powered items that are common place. I am aware there are more than just calculators but I am talking common.
Just a side note, I had an idea many years ago of making sunroofs on cars of solar panels and having them run a secondary ac that kicks on when the inside temp of car reaches 85F in these hot summer texas days. It could also kick on a heater when it drops below a certain level in the summer. I wish NASA would build that.
You know when you get higher the bombs won't get any faster.
When an object is dropped from a plane, it accelerates first at about 10 m/s-2 then as its speeds increase, the friction with the air increase.. So it accelerates until a certain speed limit that's all.
It takes about 500 meters for a skydiver to reach its speed limit.. So you don't gain anything by going higher.
Yes, if you go higher the air pressure is lower so at the beginning the speed of the bomb is higher, but as it goes down, the air pressure increase and the bomb slows down.
Their lifting capacity increases with the volume of helium they hold and their weight increases with the surface area of envelope.
And you don't have to expend any energy just to stay up.
Heavy lifting airship: http://www.cargolifter.com/
High altitude satellite airships: http://www.airship.com/
Both are concepts at the moment though the CargoLifter ship is well on it's way to being constructed.
Deleted
Yes, but not in sustained level flight, the Streak Eagle just shot up there, but did not sustain that level, where as the Helios achived sustained level flight at an altitute of 96,000+
CBS News reported on the radio that it was 96000 ft, not 85000.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
In addition to the exciting news that NASA had broken a flying wing record, Slashdot editors publically announced a new Zero Wing record, with the 1 millionth "All Your Bases Are Belong To Us" post being officially recorded today.
Does anyone know if this technology can scale down? Would it be possible to use the same principles to build a craft that is 10 meters across instead of 100?
Not if you wanted it to fly at the same altitude and speed. You'd either need it to fly much lower or much faster...
So if 100,000 foot altitude on Earth equals "sea" level altitude (give or take a few thousand feet) on Mars, could you dig a 19 mile hole in Mars and end up with the same atmospheric pressure at the bottom of the hole as what you have at sea level on Earth? Just curious.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
However, not only the telcos will benefit from this. At a million dollars, that's a hundred thousand people with ten bucks each. Whatever services can be dreamt up using this flying wing, they can be arranged by sizable non-profit organizations, or by getting an entire city to chip in. I mean, maintenance should not be staggering - solar cell arrays and electrical motors. There should not be that many moving parts in there.
Let's brainstorm fun things to do with this wing! City webcam? Aerial photos? Next Generation Big Brother? Environmental surveillance? Road reports? (hey - that one may actually be feasible if you use IR). The sky's the limit, folks! (*groan* i need to stop this punchline-mania)
Stop the brainwash
now we will have to subscribe to the sun eh
"rationality and science over superstition and religion" "got root? get some!!"
Why would you want to conduct experiments at 100,000 ft at 20 MPH? You aren't going to have low/micro gravity conditions... Is there some other reason or has NASA's PR department just gotten too used to blurting that out when asked why technology xyz might be useful?
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
> There is no terminal velocity when there's no air resistance.
Well, the original discussion was about a high-velocity bomb, where the bomb supposedly gains extra speed by falling from a greater height. Since "bomb" usually means "must hit the ground", who cares how fast it gets going at 85,000 feet? When it reaches zero feet, I suspect there'll be some air resistance to contend with.
Virg
Yeah, I understand your theory about more power from a hydrocarbon engine, but you have to understand that the air at 100,000 ft is REAL thin. You'd have to move a lot faster to get the amount of oxygen you'd need for an efficent fuel burn. Not only that, but the point of this plane is that it won't need frequent refueling: Nasa's building something that doesn't have to come down for weeks, months, maybe even years. Yeah, you're right about breaking altitude records with conventional fuel, because rockets have been doing it for years. I'd say the moon is a lot higher up than 100,000 ft
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Gravity reduces with the square of the distance, meaning your satellite needs to move at SQRT(1.187) = 1.089 times the speed of the geosynchronous satellite to have a circular orbit. If you put it at the height you mentioned, at the speed you mentioned, it would go into an eccentric orbit with your height as the perigee (or lowest point).
A satellite's orbital "speed" (if it is circular) is determined two factors, its distance from the center of mass, and the mass of that mass (strictly speaking it also depends on the mass of the satellite, but that factor is negligable when talking about artifical satellites around earth).
Basically, the closer to earth a satellite in a circular orbit is, the shorter the time it takes to orbit the earth. As an example : ISS takes about 90 minutes to orbit the earth, at an altitude of roughly 400km, so it does (2*PI*r) = 2*3.14159*6778km = 42587 km in 1.5h = 28400km/h for a roughly circular orbit.
Now, a geosynchronous satellite is at 35785km above the earth's surface, meaning r=42163km.
Which means it does 2*3.14159*42163km = 11069 km/h
Why does it move more slowly? because gravity is less strong at that distance.
The moon orbits once every 29 days at a distance of (roughly) 400.000 km. The same calculation gives us 3500km/h for the moon.
As pointed out above, this is where you are mistaken. This would only be true if gravity decreased linearly with distance from the source, while it decreases with the square of the distance.
You cannot have an object go round the earth in a circle in 1 day at any other altitude than 35785km unless you are constantly accelerating/decelerating it (using up fuel very very quickly!)
> did it have a jet pilot,
No.
> and was it launched from the ground?
Yes.
You might want to read the article.
Back in the 60's the USAF was conducting considerable research on the effects of the human body at extremely high altitude.
I believe the project was called High Flight, and consisted of subjects (volunteers) being lifted by weather balloons to altitudes of over 100,000 feet.
The way the subjects (pilots?) returned to earth was to JUMP from the capsule and parachute to the recovery point. These men exceeded Mach 1 during their freefall. (Remember, the velocity of the speed of sound is lower the less dense the atmosphere is.)
Also, if my memory serves, they experienced up to 15 minutes of freefall before their chutes were opened.
"Chemestry is Physics without thought. Mathematics is Physics without purpose."
At a cost of two orders of magnititude less than what it costs to just launch a communications satellite, you could use the craft in the same role, assuming it pulls in enough power to run the kit you'd have to load on it.
Being bigger (as it would need to be to go higher) is actually an advantage here, because it means more solar cells to generate power. Also you can have one over more cities that just Nairobi. Since it can circle any point on the Earth's surface.
Kepler and Newton are spinning in their graves.
I'm to lazy to actually do the math, but your second satellite will not stay in your nice circular orbit. Instead, it will probably take up some eccentric, decidedly NON-geosynchronous orbit.
You can not maintain a circular orbit at an arbitrary altitude at an arbitrary velocity. Think of a ball tied to a string being swung around in a circle. The tension in the string is providing a centripetal acceleration that is maintaining the cirular path of the spinning ball (An observer on the ball might call this a "centrifugal force"). What is keeping your satellite in orbit? GRAVITY, of course. And the gravitational force (the "string" that is holding your satellite in its orbit) is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the satellite and the center of the earth. So if your second satellite is orbiting at a higher altitude, the gravitational force acting on the satellite will be reduced. Thus, to remain in a circular orbit, your second satellite would have to be travelling slower, in order for the reduced gravitational force to still be providing enough centripetal acceleration to maintain a circular orbit.
Think of it this way: for an object to stay in a circular orbit, the gravitational force on the object must exactly balance the "centrifugal force" on the object (there really is no such thing as "centrifugal force", but this is an easy way to think about it). If an object moves faster around that orbit, the "centrifugal force" will increase, but the gravitational force remains constant, so the object would tend to drift outwards from its original orbit. So for each altitude, there is a specific orbital velocity required to maintain that circular orbit. Geosynchronous orbit is the ONE specific altitude for which the associated orbital velocity will keep the satellite orbiting the earth every 23 hours and 56 minutes.
the idea, i believe, is to have a fleet of them in the air at one time, so instead of a 'stationary' geosynchronous orbit it would behave more like a cell network in motion.
complex
For the paranoid:
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/movie/Helios/inde x.html
Would a conventional engine powered plane be able to stay up that long?
"Why don't you enjoy a nice cup of shut the hell up!" - Al Gore
If you mean "high capacity", you're wrong. The amount of data you can put on air is positively pathetic compared with fiber, especially if you take into account the cost.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
When planes travel at 30000 feet, they make use of the so called jet-steams which have speeds of up to ca 100 mph (anyone have the correct number). Those streams do not reach up to 100000 feet. As far as I know are the winds in those hights relativly low as the air is very thin up there ( as far as I remember from my basic metorlogy education). Anyhow - I don't think NASA would send up such a slow plane when they couldn't maintain position......
i cant seem to get you morons to mod me *UP* any .. so i might as well go fFor down!
y'know, like any of this matters .. i mean, what is this thing here fFor, if not to post some jokes?
My guess would be that at those altitudes, the air is dispersed enough that you have a good velocity going, but not enough mass to provide large amounts of force, to say it in physics terms. At 20 mph, the plane has enough power at least to try and alter course a bit, not much, but enough for NASA. However, I'm not much of an expert on conditions up there either.
As of 4:11 in Hawaii, helios was up to 96,500 feet!
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
They say that they were testing viability of a similar wing to work in the atmosphere of Mars. I'm thinking a few thoughts about that:
- American climate.
First, this thing is BIG! Getting it to auto-assemble there would be quite a trick, even if we could get it there with the current space-exploration-is-interesting-and-therefore-un
Secondly, the sun is less than half as bright there as here - obviously it's quite efficient so it could run on other fuels (especially given the weight savings of taking off all those solar panels) but it couldn't run forever. A solar-powered version would have a hard time unless solar cells got lots more efficient, or they made it lots bigger, or something. It's not fast enough to chase the sun, is it? Does Mars happen to rotate really, really slowly?
All quite possible, but I'd love to know how far off such improvements are. Are we there already? Another 5 years?
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
You need to look for stories about the early very high altitude parachute tests. That sky diver broke the speed of sound. Since it was in near vacuum however there was little effect. I think he started around the 85,000 foot mark.
Remember that the speed of sound is a function of air preasure. So whilst he may have been travelling faster than the speed of sound at sea level he probably wasn't in the air he was falling through.
As somebody previously mentioned, flights above 85,000 ft. tend to be somewhat oxygen-starved... not the best for "conventionally-fueled" engines unless you bring your own oxygen supply for your conventional fuel.
Some quick calculations...85,000 feet works out to be about 30 mb, or roughly 3% of surface pressure. Given the well-mixed status of atmospheric oxygen (although this high above the ozone layer, this may not be the case) you may reasonably assume that at 85,000 feet, you have only a fraction of the oxygen you would at normal flight levels (say three to ten percent)- too little to fire up your Continentals or your Pratt & Whitneys. :^)
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
These floating satellites could then communicate with each other across the country. If the corps continue on their reverse evolutionary course to their destination as complete reptilian brained creatures, we would have a nice alternative to them. Indeed, this could make for an affordable public utility if reliabiity could be engineered into them. Indestructable bearings from super hard steel could lead to motors that could run for decades or longer, non-stop.
A refreshing bit of news after all these years of gloomy turns for the worse in this country.
wowooo!
I meant, reliance on corps for the internet, not elimination of corps in general.
Does anyone know if this technology can scale down? Would it be possible to use the same principles to build a craft that is 10 meters across instead of 100?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
The real usefulness of such a craft, as the article briefly mentions, is to be a communications platform.
Ever call a friend in a far-away land? Or use the internet via one of the satellite providers? Communications to a geosync satellite, some 25000 miles away in geosync orbit, causes almost 2 seconds of delay. Plus, once a satellite is up there, it can't be brought back. (for those of you who don't know, no, the shuttle only goes some 150 miles up and costs a $zillion per flight).
Such a solar-powered, high-alititude plane can be flown high above the weather, stay aloft indefiniately, and can be used as a handy communications platform for a city. It's a lot cheaper than sending a satellite into geosync, AND it can be brought back down for upgrades of maintenence. Plus there is added protection from solar radition. Yahoo! Add a fuel cell for night time, and you've got a great, cheap alternative to a communications satellite.
So although it seems like a silly idea, or only Mars-centric, it is getting a lot of interest from communication providers like BT and AT&T.
Say goodbye to geosync satellites? Perhaps!
Using your figures of a 23 hour, 56 minute day and 35785 km the speed (note; not the same as velocity) of the satellite =
2 x pi x (35785km + radius of Earth) / 23.933 h
The radius of the Earth is about 6370 km (see here for info), so the speed of the satellite is:
2 x pi x 42115 km / 23.933 h = 11067 km/h
Now, suppose we put a satellite at, let's say, 43630 km from the surface. Gravity still works at this height. So you can still put an object in orbit. And suppose we set it moving in an orbit parallel to the lower satellite at a speed of, ooooh, about, 13127 km/h. What then?
Geosynchronous orbit is simply keeping the satellite over a particular point on the ground (as I'm sure you're aware). Or in this case we simply need to see if we can keep pace with the lower satellite (using your figures).
Let's think of an analogy - two runners going round a circular circuit. One runner gets an inside lane, and the other gets the outside lane. But the outside lane is longer (the radius is bigger) than the inside lane, so if the outside runner wants to keep pace with the inside runner he has to run faster. The speed he has to run depends on the circumference of his track - the ratio of his speed to the inner runner must be the same as the ratio of his track length to the inner track length. And because it's a circle, we can simplify that ratio to Radius(outer):Radius(inner).
Now, let's return to our satellites - suppose yours and mine start above the same point on the Earth, and we know that yours is geostationary. If mine manages to travel faster than yours around it's larger orbit then it will keep pace with yours and stay geostationary.
The ratio of distances from the centre of mass of the Earth is (43630km + radiusEarth):(35785km + radiusEarth) = 50000:42115 = 1.187:1
So my satellite needs to be moving 1.187 times faster than yours - 11067km/h x 1.187 = 13136km/h, which is pretty damn close to the speed I specified above (accounting for rounding errors). Why, it's almost like I cheated.
Essentially, a geosynchronous orbit can be achieved at any altitude, but it must be over the Equator (as I already explained to someone else) and the speed that the satellite must move is directly proportional to the altitude.
Please don't believe everything you find on Google - try doing the maths yourself first.
The Army knows well the potential of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. They were used in Kosovo, and a new UAV (Global Hawk) can take off in LA, fly to Boston, reconnoiter the entire east coast, and fly back in one mission.
The Navy is developing (along w/ the Army) the ability to use them as network relay stations, offering 100Mbit uplinks for submarines. Battle-sustainable wireless networks.
The Air Force has done some experiments WRT using UAV's as weapon delivery systems. Cheaper and safer than sending in a pilot in an F15E.
Keep in mind that commercially available hydrocarbon aircraft fuels will evaporate quickly (ie, boil) at high altitude. Either you have to pressurize the fuel tanks (meaning heavier tanks) or you have to bleed fuel.
On a related note, don't store sterno cans in a hermetically sealed container. Damn methyl alcohol evaporates out of the can, and condenses all over the container.
Flying blimps to support wireless communications. Since it's already cheaper to run wireless facilities than to string cable across the Andes, for example and since blimps are cheaper to run than comsats, this is already being attempted.
I can understand the record for prop aircraft, but the F-15 Streak Eagle climbed to 98,425ft in 1972 when it set a time-to-climb record. See this for more details. On top of that, it just looks like it can go that high. The Helios, cool as it is, looks more like something that would be powered by rubber bands than high-tech electric stuff...
There is no terminal velocity when there's no air resistance. You need to look for stories about the early very high altitude parachute tests. That sky diver broke the speed of sound. Since it was in near vacuum however there was little effect. I think he started around the 85,000 foot mark.
- Sig this!
Seems to me that if they kept the same design, but replaced the solar cells and electric motors with conventionally-fueled engines, it would be able to fly even higher. All those solar cells are heavy, and a hydrocarbon engine has higher power density (more thrust per kilogram of engine weight).
I realize the point of this research is to eventually have a craft that can charge up during the day and fly on stored energy at night, so it can stay aloft for months at a time. Still, if you were simply trying to break altitude records, wouldn't conventional power be the way to go?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
So now you're thinking of packing up a *240* foot aircraft and taking it to Mars in order to explore Mars rather than taking a big empty plastic bag and a bottle of compressed Helium?
Any way you look at it, Helios is a stupid project, wasting time and money trying to push conventional technologies to absurd degrees.
Classic NASA though.
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Wind exerts no "force" on an aircraft. The airplane moves witht he body of air that is in. If the wind is moving south at 20 knots, so is the aircraft, regardless of altitude. The concept you are all looking for is INDICATED vs. TRUE airspeed. An airspeed indicator is a pressure gauge. At the surface, 20MPH on the gauge is 20 MPH through the air. The higher you go, the faster you have to go to see 20 MPH on the gauge. Thus 20 MPH AIRSPEED at 100K feet is 170 MPH true airspeed (or speed over ground assuming no wind).
Actually, the thing does have fuel cell batteries that keep it up at night. It does not have to "stay on the sunny side of the earth", nor would that be possible when you only fly 20 miles per hour.
http://kered.org
This updated story on Yahoo! says they made it to 96,500 before NASA decided to turn it around. Go NASA!
It's also got a bit more info about the craft itself, and their reasons for building it including purposes like Mars surveying missions.
Enjoy!
Not on communication satellites but also cheap telescopes! People have been using baloons so far, but such wing can take you much higher! For a fractions of the cost of a satellite and there is nothing above you.
Thats all well and good. But these measurements mean nothing to me since they are in imperial. Most of the world uses metric, most science projects use metric. Why not this?
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
does anyone have any more details on this? In particular, I'm wondering, did it have a jet pilot, and was it launched from the ground?
Too cheap, and not enough testosterone-appeal for the gov't./military to be interested.
The 20mph was at much lower levels while taking off.
Which makes landing it rather tricky, since even a moderate wind level could affect it.
If that's so, what's the advantage of the plane, nifty though the technology is?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
They only thought they broke a record.
:)
They just now realized that they miscalculated, due to an error converting between metric and fscked-up units.
The Flying Nun's last known position was somewhere in the Orion Nebula after a freak sudden hurricane.
Ok, /.'ers, let's get our pennies together, buy a fleet of those bad boys, hang some Yagi's from the wings, and get things moving!
Seriously, this has potential. I don't know what the payload would be on this bird, but you would get the advantages of satellite communication, without the latency.
(Yeah, I know, it's hanging only 19 miles AGL, which really limits its coverage, but it's a start!)
- Bill
According to the FAI, a russian plane (listed as an "e266M", I think that is a modified MiG-25), acheived 37650 meters (approx. 120,000 ft) in 1977. See http://www.fai.org/general_aviation/records/record s.asp?subclass=C-1&group=3
> A bomb is going to be considerably more aerodynamic,
> so it's terminal velocity is higher.
You're quite right, but in your own statement you also prove his point. No matter that the terminal velocity of the bomb is higher than a skydiver, it's still going to reach that terminal velocity at some point in the fall. Assuming it reaches terminal within 5,000 feet instead of 1,666, it's still going to be moving at that speed if you drop it from 6,000 feet or 85,000 feet. So, as he stated, there's no point in terms of velocity to carrying it nearly into orbit before dropping it.
Virg
According to this story on Yahoo!, the flight has come to an end. They came up just short of the 100,000ft mark, but obviously this was quite a successful trip for an un-manned/non-rocket-powered aircraft. I'd just like to see video of the thing in action.
There's far more sane technologies out there.
http://www.airship.com/
No need to supply power just to keep the thing in the air. Any power supplied is for position maintenance and supplying power to the payload.
Deleted
DOH!
Why on earth would a high altitude airship need a tether when a high altitude aeroplane does not need a tether? Hmm? Hmm?
You do realise that airships have engines and propellers don't you?
Deleted
"The cost of the wing is around $1 million, compared with more than that just to launch a satellite" this is where cnn shoots them self in the foot. the plain cost $1M and it cost just over $1M to launch a sat into space. the satalite itself would cost the same to produce, its just the launching cost thats cheaper, and not much cheaper though right? am I reading this wrong? come on cnn get some real reporting skills, how much more does it cost? Chris Lee lee@mediawaveonline.com
This plane is also in the running for the Mars flights. They did a balloon drop of an uppowered version to test it out. Started at 101k feet
p la ne/
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0108/14mars
What kind of idiot designs a 240 foot aeroplane to do this kind of job?
I mean, christ, it takes "research" to see if the thing will even get of the ground without breaking up.
It's *stupid* taken to an extreme. There's far more appropriate technology out there for this purpose.
http://www.airship.com/
Deleted
Wouldn't it be even lighter to fill an airship with empty space?
There's only one altitude where a satellite can sit without expending any fuel and still stay geosynchronous, the altitude where the centripetal acceleration is the exact opposite of the force of gravity.
All other altitutes would require delta-V to stay stable, which requires burning fuel, which means that any known satellite would burn up it's fuel supply in minutes or hours.
Saved the forced orbits for fusion drives, or impluse power, or whatever.
Incorrect. You are neglecting, sir, the force of gravity vs. the centripedal force required.
By your definition, I'm would be in a geosynchronous orbit if I were standing on the equator, although I am obviously not orbiting.
The centripedal force required to maintain a circular path increases proportionally to the radius from the center of the circle (r*omega squard). The force of gravity that provides this centripedal force, however, decreases with the square of the radius from the center of the earth/orbit/circle. As it turns out, the only place where those two forces match is at the altitude required for geosynchronous orbit. An object below the geosynchronous altitude with the required angular velocity will fall to the earth (see: yourself), and one above it will form an elliptical orbit or fly off into space. [I really don't feel like doing the calculations now]
You can have a geosynchronously moving bit at any altitude or line of latitude but both require powered station-keeping -- I could be in a geosynchronous 'orbit' right now if I could generate 9.8 m/s^2 accelearation under my chair.
For all intentes and purposes, howerver, satellites require unpowered station-keeping, resulting in a fixed geosynchronous altitude.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
No, of course not. Helios has prop engines. The altitude record for jet aircraft is still held by a jet aircraft.
I was not referring to its kenetic energy as its weapons potential, I was referring to a maximum explosive payload with minimum waste.
Atomics can also be used in a "gravity bomb" configuration.
Steigler also uses kenetic "crowbars" dropped from orbit in his book, litteral "gravity" bombs, but he goes to great pains to differentiate their effectiveness from those of the explosive nature.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics